5 Amazing Advances That Are About to Make Hard Work Obsolete

We know how it is. Taking entire minutes away from the important things in life (i.e., reading Cracked) to address the necessities that keep your whole world from crumbling into shambles around you ... it's a total drag, man. Well, not to worry, because the technology of the future has got your (lazy) ass covered.

Yeah, you industrious types who take great joy in doing difficult tasks -- go clean your gutters. For the rest of our lazy brethren who are still reading this, probably from bed, we're here to tell you that the future is bright. This is thanks to ...

#5. Clothes That Don't Require Laundering

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Doing the laundry is one of those never-ending, pain-in-the-ass cycles that have been shitting on Sunday afternoons ever since mankind mistakenly chose garments over nudity. It's time consuming, it uses a ton of water and electricity, and it may require hanging out in a laundromat with bitter divorcees and screaming children for four hours.

So is there nothing you can do about this, science?

GettyEvery goddamn time.

Science to the Rescue

Material scientists at the Donghua University in China have developed a self-cleaning cotton fabric that eliminates stains and bacteria when it's placed in sunlight. To perform this convenient magic trick, the clothing is covered in a coating comprised of titanium dioxide and nitrogen. Titanium dioxide has long been used in products such as self-cleaning windows and odor-free socks because of its remarkable ability to break down dirt and kick microbes right in their microbial junk.

GettyHang them outside and you have yourself a microbe bug zapper.

Unfortunately, this method tends to only work in intense ultraviolet light, which is completely impractical for an application involving everyday clothing. To combat this glaring issue, the researchers infused the coating with nitrogen, slapped on some silver iodide nanoparticles, and told the ultraviolet spectrum to get fucked. What we're left with is ultra-sunlight-sensitive clothing that lets you leave the house looking like a filthy hobo (or, well, your average college student) and arrive at that job interview looking like the perfect candidate.

Of course, that lasts only as long as you can avoid spilling burrito juice all over your pants. That is, unless you're wearing clothing developed by the sorcerers at Ross Nanotechnology, who've created a substance called NeverWet that does this:

In case you missed it, that video shows them dumping chocolate all over a white canvas shoe, only to have it roll cleanly off like criminal charges on a banker. That's right: These guys have created a magic potion that repels anything that even thinks about leaving a stain.

To take this to its obvious conclusion: Yes, your dreams of bathing in barbecue sauce and beer without having to so much as bust out the Stain Stick are about to come true. And that's good, because somebody who is constantly spilling food on himself is surely too busy with high-power business meetings to be doing laundry.

Getty"I ate a shoe."

#4. Beds That Make Themselves

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You don't even have to be lazy to understand why everyone hates making the bed -- it seems like such a waste of time to straighten up something that's inevitably going to get messy again during the three or four naps we take each day. Yet if company shows up, we feel like pigs for letting them see the sheets wadded up in a knot on the bed. The whole system is bullshit.

Science to the Rescue

Enter OHEA, a company that has even more to offer than a logo that looks like an Atari-era rendering of a dong (as if that weren't enough):

We present to you the OHEA Smart Bed, the future of fooling everyone into believing that you aren't a lazy slob.

After watching that little girl flail around like a seizure victim for a bit (which is actually a toned-down depiction of an 8-year-old's sleep habits), you'll see that the Smart Bed is the first slumber box that automatically makes itself when you get up in the morning. Three seconds after you get out of the bed, a lid on either side of it opens to reveal a mechanical arm with rollers. After positioning the duvet, the unit pulls it up to the head of the bed and the rollers go back into hiding within the bed frame. At the same time, cords attached to the pillows at the head of the bed lift the pillows up, allowing them to hover above the surface until the coverlet is stretched into position. The pillows are then lowered back onto the bed, leaving you with a perfectly manicured masturbation pad.

We still aren't sure how all these cords and rollers and mechanical arms manage to not strangle you to death in the middle of the night, and we're fully expecting to see this scenario play out in the next installment of Final Destination. But hey, two extra minutes of sleep!

Getty"That's two extra minutes the entire world can just lick my asshole."

#3. Gum That Brushes Your Teeth

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As you may or may not be aware, clean teeth are pretty much a requirement for most forms of face-to-face communication beyond hurling rocks and grunting. Unfortunately, the main method for obtaining clean teeth has some serious flaws: It's boring, it's repetitive, and (worst of all) it requires you to get up from the couch and move one of your arms a bit. Thankfully, there's a solution on the way, and it lies within the magic of modern military technology.

GettyNo, it's not a scary military guy screaming at you to get up off of your lazy ass and brush your goddamn teeth.

Science to the Rescue

Researchers in the U.S. Army Dental and Trauma Research Detachment have made several important contributions to the world of science. For one thing, they've proven conclusively that America does in fact have a military version of everything. Arguably more importantly, in order to combat "Mountain Dew mouth" -- a widespread problem in America's military thanks to deployed soldiers guzzling a constant stream of soda and then not having sufficient means to scrape the resulting toxic nastiness off of their pearly whites -- they've devised a chewable gum with the potential to replace the need for brushing teeth.

There's essentially nothing to it: You just pop the gum into your mouth and let it work its magic. The gum -- awesomely dubbed "combat gum" -- is the product of 10 years of development, and Army researchers are hopeful that it will one day be distributed worldwide. It works by mimicking the action of brushing with toothpaste, allowing a respite from the tedium of brushing for "at least a couple of days," or what the more lazily inclined among us might refer to as "a veritable wealth of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reruns." The active ingredient is a protein that targets plaque- and infection-causing bacteria, breaking them down and leaving your teeth sparkling and gorgeous.